April 15, 2016

Instant Rogue's Gallery, Just Add Beats

In Mystery Skulls Animated: Ghost, we met some van-driving interfering youths with more backstory than a certain 1960's TV show ever had (Mystery Inc. notwithstanding). Now it's time reacquaint and just plain acquaint outselves with foes old and new older in Mystery Skulls Animated: Freaking Out. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 11:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Four hands, two hearts

Márta and György Kurtág play Bach-transcriptions by Kurtág - The two play transcriptions made by the composer of Bach's choral prelude Das alte Jahr vergangen ist BWV 614, his Duet BWV 804 and a (devastating) movement from the Baroque composer's cantata Actus tragicus. [more inside]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:10 PM PST - 8 comments

Ten pounds of what?

When Bitcoin Grows Up, John Lanchester
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:22 PM PST - 30 comments

Starlog presents CineMagic: The Guide to Fantastic Filmmaking

If you made (or dreamed about making) super-8mm movies in the late 1970's to early 1980's, and loved visual effects, you read CINEMAGIC magazine. You can download scans of issues here and here (the second link contains a bit more background).
posted by misterbee at 7:43 PM PST - 4 comments

riverrun... from swerve of shore to bend of bay

Rivers through time, as seen in Landsat images. "Thanks to the Landsat program and Google Earth Engine, it is possible now to explore how the surface of the Earth has been changing through the last thirty years or so. Besides the obvious issues of interest, like changes in vegetation, the spread of cities, and the melting of glaciers, it is also possible to look at how rivers change their courses through time."
posted by storybored at 7:29 PM PST - 8 comments

FROG IS A CLASS 1 LASER DEVICE. DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY INTO FROG'S EYES.

Tips on operating your frog. Click the frog for more tips. [more inside]
posted by Hactar at 7:22 PM PST - 28 comments

"Why"

"I met Steve while volunteering at a Challenged Athletes Clinic in Boston back in September of 2013. But Steve didn’t seem to want to be there. Everything about his body language said, “Don’t talk to me.” His beard needed trimming, his arms were crossed, and he stood as far from the center of activity as possible. And who could blame him? How would you feel if you lost your leg 5 months earlier as a spectator at the finish line of the Boston Marathon?" [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:07 PM PST - 21 comments

Swimming in socks

From Joe Posnanski's blog, about his daughter Elizabeth.
posted by dfm500 at 12:37 PM PST - 17 comments

modern send-ups of blues tunes transformed into dancing ditties

Black Trauma Remixed For Your Clicks
In viral videos, the real-life pain of black people is repurposed into fun, catchy songs for popular consumption. But at what cost?
posted by andoatnp at 12:01 PM PST - 25 comments

Step 1) Find your dirtiest friend

"This is a very light overview of some information you may want to know for your first mushroom trip." Comedian Ari Shaffir may not resemble Bill Hicks (more) in nearly any other way but he has become this comedy generation's mushroom advocate despite having had some questionable trips. Shroomfest is a thing that happens once a year in Telluride, Colorado.
posted by jessamyn at 11:35 AM PST - 50 comments

No pokey

A short history of the thimbles one might find in the English countryside. Also crotal bells and Gunter's chain markings. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 11:33 AM PST - 11 comments

Insert Ham Joke Here

Need a little something to enliven up your seder? There's a great Black Lives Matter Supplement from JFREJ. A Refugee Supplement from HIAS. Or any number of social justice supplements. But my favorite might be A Hamilton Haggadah, written by a couple of rabbinical students at RRC.
posted by ericbop at 11:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

Robert H. Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University, for The Atlantic: Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think. "...the luckiest among us appear especially unlikely to appreciate our good fortune. According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time." [more inside]
posted by amnesia and magnets at 10:19 AM PST - 116 comments

“No humbug is great without truth at bottom.”

The Battle Over the Sea-Monkey Fortune. A former 1960s bondage-film actress is waging legal combat with a toy company for ownership of her husband’s mail-order aquatic-pet empire.
posted by Scoop at 9:36 AM PST - 32 comments

"Hey! It's time to cause some mischief!"

"A Prank Time!" - a short animation, by Jaime Rodriguez (also on Newgrounds). [more inside]
posted by progosk at 9:33 AM PST - 8 comments

The scientific way to train white people to stop being racist

No one wants to be called fragile. And if you’re white, what you feel reading the title of this article may be indicative of the term. “White fragility” refers to white people’s low emotional tolerance for discussing topics of race and racism. What makes race so hard for white people to talk about? And more importantly, what can they do about it? [more inside]
posted by sciatrix at 9:15 AM PST - 190 comments

What is the process for getting a security clearance?

People in the United States who hold security clearances should be those: “...whose personal and professional history affirmatively indicates loyalty to the United States, strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, reliability, discretion, and sound judgment, as well as freedom from conflicting allegiances and potential for coercion, and willingness and ability to abide by regulations governing the use, handling, and protection of classified information.” Executive Order #12968 [more inside]
posted by Across the pale parabola of joy at 9:11 AM PST - 62 comments

Every Disney song, from worst to best

The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the unforgettable, the forgettable, the racist, the sexist, the silly, the enthralling — it's all here, in this list of every Disney song, ranked from worst to best. (Click here to start the list; here's the top 10; and here's the whole thing on one page.) [more inside]
posted by John Cohen at 7:51 AM PST - 113 comments

водка яд!

Golem - "Vodka is Poison" (Previously)
posted by griphus at 7:38 AM PST - 16 comments

We are all neoliberals now.

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
posted by Grangousier at 6:05 AM PST - 67 comments

People Who Write Theatre Reviews Are Very Easily Provoked

So, you're thinking about seeing a play...
posted by Navelgazer at 5:36 AM PST - 25 comments

A Question of Privilege

Writer Marti Leimbach explores how her personal circumstances make it difficult for her to define privilege. [more inside]
posted by snickerdoodle at 4:56 AM PST - 90 comments

Order! Ordaaaar!

The northern UK Member of Parliament, Dennis Skinner, attacked David Cameron in Prime Minister's Questions this week, and was thrown out of the chamber for refusing to take back the blistering epithet - Dodgy Dave. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 4:55 AM PST - 28 comments

Are you not entertained?

100 Greatest One-Liners: After The Kill - the obvious and inevitable follow-up to this. (slv) (also NSFW)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:56 AM PST - 30 comments

The Man Who Sold the Ocean

The story of Irv Teibel, the man behind Syntonic Research and the Environments record series. [Environments previously on MetaFilter] [more inside]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:33 AM PST - 6 comments

Will it get the job done, on time, and even if lots of things go wrong?

Gagarin was an incredibly lucky man to have come out of this unhurt and alive. In rushing to accomplish a human spaceflight in the race with the US, Soviet engineers pushed the boundary of acceptable risk to its limits. Fortunately for Soviet planners everything went well.
Yuri Gagarin's flight as the first human in space fiftyfive years ago may have been slightly more dangerous than previously thought.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Why critics need to stop getting personal in their essays

"Contemporary criticism is positively crowded with first-person pronouns, micro-doses of memoir, brief hits of biography. Critics don’t simply wrestle with their assigned cultural object; they wrestle with themselves, as well. Recent examples suggest a spectrum, from reviews that harmlessly kick off with a personal anecdote, to hybrid pieces that blend literary criticism and longform memoir." [more inside]
posted by Cantdosleepy at 2:08 AM PST - 27 comments

« Previous day | Next day »